Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing Sharon Drew Morgen, author of the new book entitled, Dirty Little Secrets: Why Sales Can’t Sell; Customers Can’t Buy; and What You Can Do About It. You can listen to my interview with her by clicking on Interview with Sharon Drew.
- The people or technology that are providing a work-around for the Identified Problem.
- All of the rules that kept the status quo in place
- All of the initiatives that are working around and maintaining the Identified Problem.
- All of the people and departments that will be affected by the change that the new solution will bring.
- The budget: Where will it come from; the accounting practices regarding how the project will be monetized and for how long; what has to be moved around.
- Current vendor issues, including the relationships the buyers have had with vendors over time.
- Wildcards: whatever other stakeholders, financial, technical or people issues that need to be managed.
How does one go about identifying the part of the iceberg below the waterline? The answer is the Buying Facilitation™ conversation. The Buying Facilitation conversation is very different from a typical sales conversation.
Buying Facilitation Questions are not the typical BANT questions salespeople ask — about Budget, Access to Power, Needs and TimeFrame. Instead, Facilitation Questions go to the heart of the customer’s system. For instance, contrast these two approaches from a salesperson selling email software:
Traditional Sales
- What are your goals for your email project?
- Who will be involved in the decision?
- What is your budget?
Buying Facilitation
- How have your tried to address your email challenges in the past? Why didn’t it work? How will you know that it cannot be made to work?
- How will you know it is time to replace your current email software?
- How will your email software selection be deployed in such a way to eliminate chaos and risk of failure?
Sharon Drew describes this as a GPS approach. The customer needs to go somewhere and chooses the destination. You guide them there.
What are the benefits of this approach?
- Dramatically shorter sales cycles — cut by 1/2 or more.
- End of discounting. Sharon Drew says “Money is never the issue. Never, never, never.”
- You become a trusted guide and member of the decision team.
- Elimination of competition.
To learn purchase this book and learn about Sharon Drew Morgen, please visit Dirty Little Secrets and Sharon Drew Morgen.
Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers. We make lead generation simple. With almost 7 out 10 companies saying a lack of quality sales leads is their biggest challenge, we help companies implement demand generation programs to find and acquire new customers using best practices in lead generation. He can be reached at (516) 495-9350 or jeff.ogden at findnewcustomers.com.
